After our fun-filled day of adventure with Kathy, Chelsea and I woke up late and headed out to the Big Bend boulders just outside of Moab. We pulled up to a nice looking boulder and jumped out of the car to check it out. It was beautiful! I haven't seen such a nice looking sandstone boulder in a long time. I was psyched to try all the problems, which included a bunch of fun crimp lines. After warming up, I jumped on a really cool V5 that started under a roof and moved out to a bunch of thin crimp matches. I tried the line again and again, making more progress each time until I was just one move away!
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| An excellent problem at Big Bend |
Unfortunately, that moved thwarted me, as my foot was still under the roof and stopped my momentum when I tried to lunge up for the last hold. Nevertheless, climbing on this boulder got my extremely psyched for the next leg of our trip- Moe's and Joe's Valley! I love sandstone bouldering and this little excursion just got me more excited. We jumped in the car in our shorts and tanks, ready to escape the 80 degree weather. Just a short time later, we were driving through a snowstorm. We got out to get gas and nearly froze our buns off. What a change one hundred miles can make... Two snowstorms and many hours later we had crossed into Nevada. (We were on our way to pick up Eric, who has been living in Bishop. Quite the detour... I know!) We passed a sign that said "100 miles to next gas." Fortunately, we had more than half a tank left and 215 miles til empty according to our range. 100 miles later, there was no gas station. At the junction for Highway 6, there was also no gas station. Our tank started to dwindle, and so did our hopes of finding a gas station. We slowly made our way up a mountain pass and then rolled down it, trying to stretch our mileage as far as possible. We saw lights in the distance and crept ever closer to them. They turned out to be a mirage. (Not really, but not a gas station either). At about 10 miles til empty, we passed a sign that said "116 miles until next gas." Chelsea and I just looked at each other, and couldn't do anything but laugh. "We're screwed." We looked at our cell phones. No service... Since there really was literally nothing we could do, we pulled over on the side of the road and went to sleep. I guess my internal balance must have gotten shifted after driving for the previous 9 hours, because when I stepped out of the car I wobbled and slammed the door on my thumb. Owwww!
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| My obese, unusable thumb. Fortunately, I've been able to climb without it |
We crawled in the back of the car with Star and went to sleep. Except I didn't sleep because my thumb was throbbing the entire night. A total of two vehicles passed during the entire night, which did not bode well for the following day. Eventually the sun rose and we saw that we really were in the middle of nowhere, and trying to walk to a town was definitely out of the question. Chelsea made a beautiful sign out of box of pancake mix and a Sharpie that said "GAS."
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| Sad face. |
Then we settled in for what we thought would be a very long day. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long until a car came. Chelsea jumped out and danced on the side of the highway and the kind sir pulled over. He said he would alert someone down the road about our situation and see if anyone could bring us gas. A few others passed during the next hour and everyone had the same reaction to our situation, "wow this is the worst place ever to run out of gas!" Yes, thank you for that helpful piece of information... We had just put on a movie on when someone pulled up behind us with a 5 gallon gas tank! Our hero! Soon we were on our way and not too much later, we had arrived in Bishop! What a happy ending to our epic night :) We spent a day and a half in Bishop and got to climb a little bit before departed for Moe's. I surprised myself by making a lot of progress on Pain Grain, a cool V5 in the Buttermilks.
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| Brother-sister teamwork climbing in the Happies |
We have now been in Moe's for about 5 days and are loving it! Expect a full update on our climbing here to come soon. Within the next few days we will be moving on to Joe's.
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| Me working Underwhelmed V6 in Moe's. More to follow! |
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